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AMICUS believes that the proposed changes being recommended by the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee will allow negligent employers to escape their obligations because workers having a personal injury claim will no longer feel confident pursuing it in court. Currently, in personal injury claims where the plaintiff is awarded under £1000 they are not able to have their legal costs covered by the defendant.

If the proposed recommendations are implemented, that figure will be raised to £2500 ensuring that nearly half of all people having personal injury claims will not be able to have their legal costs covered. Without legal costs being covered many people will decide not to pursue their case, leaving the door wide open for abuse by employers.

The alternative situation would be that people would attempt to represent themselves in personal injury claims. In a recent survey commissioned by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) 73% of the people surveyed admitted that they would be unable to value their claim without legal help. 64% of those surveyed said that they would not pursue a personal injury case without legal representation. The survey also showed that in cases valued at less than £5000 the difference between the first offer given to the plaintiff from the defendant's insurer and the final settlement after a case with legal representation was 50% higher. Since people without legal representation would be more likely to want to avoid court, they would also be more likely to accept the first offer from the insurer and would, in the end, be under compensated by 50%. All of these statistics point to a situation in which justice is being denied because of the plaintiff having no money for legal representation.

According to AMICUS, the legal costs in an average small claims court personal injury case amount to the equivalent of a minimum wage worker's salary for nine months. This type of money would be prohibitive for an injured poor person and they would not file a personal injury claim despite their legitimate right to compensation.

AMICUS believes that if MP's want to reduce the number of personal injury claims from the work place they'd rather get the insurance industry to link insurance premiums for employers to the results from safety assessments of their business. Safer work places will reduce the number of personal injury claims because less people will be injured, instead of reducing the number of personal injury claims by denying poor people legal recourse.